One of the purposes of the third homework was to introduce you to three different methods for determining the cost of generation. These methods were:
- Per capita costs
- Financed costs based on total sticker price
- Unit costs (e.g. $/kwh)
> essentially the same as the levelized cost, if it includes operating costs
Energy conservation matters quite a bit for per capita costs and for total sticker price as this determines the total amount of facilities that need to be built. Energy conservation does not matter for unit costs - the unit cost of generation generally does not depend upon the total amount generated.
Per capita costs matter in this example if some state wanted to become an energy provider for a region - in such a scheme the citizens share in the profits (which is exactly what occurred in Alaska in the 1970s/80s).
Sticker price is large (2 trillion dollars for California) and beyond the ability to achieve unless extremely favorable financing conditions exist. Without such favorable financing, large scale facilities can never be built. You could have said the same thing in the 1930s > this would seem to imply that government financing is mandatory for truly large scale, transformational process. Without out this, we will simply continue to piss along in an incremental fashion and we will never transition to a sustainable economy.